73-77) the same professor points out, as consequences of exaggerated competition, the incessant formation of a financial and landed aristocracy and the approaching downfall of small holders, and he raises the cry of alarm.M.Blanqui, on his side, declares that the organization of labor is recognized by economic science as in the order of the day (he has since retracted the statement), urges the participation of workers in the profits and the advent of the collective laborer, and thunders continually against the monopolies, prohibitions, and tyranny of capital.Qui habet aures audiendi audiat! M.Rossi, as a writer on criminal law, decrees against the robberies of competition; M.
Blanqui, as examining magistrate, proclaims the guilty parties: it is the counterpart of the duet sung just now by MM.Reybaud and Dunoyer.When the latter cry Hosanna, the former respond, like the Fathers in the Councils, Anathema.
But, it will be said, MM.Blanqui and Rossi mean to strike only the abuses of competition; they have taken care not to proscribe the principle, and in that they are thoroughly in accord with MM.Reybaud and Dunoyer.
I protest against this distinction, in the interest of the fame of the two professors.
In fact, abuse has invaded everything, and the exception has become the rule.When M.Troplong, defending, with all the economists, the liberty of commerce, admitted that the coalition of the cab companies was one of those facts against which the legislator finds himself absolutely powerless, and which seem to contradict the sanest notions of social economy, he still had the consolation of saying to himself that such a fact was wholly exceptional, and that there was reason to believe that it would not become general.
Now, this fact has become general: the most conservative jurisconsult has only to put his head out of his window to see that today absolutely everything has been monopolized through competition, -- transportation (by land, rail, and water), wheat and flour, wine and brandy, wood, coal, oil, iron, fabrics, salt, chemical products, etc.It is sad for jurisprudence, that twin sister of political economy, to see its grave anticipations contradicted in less than a lustre, but it is sadder still for a great nation to be led by such poor geniuses and to glean the few ideas which sustain its life from the brushwood of their writings.
In theory we have demonstrated that competition, on its useful side, should be universal and carried to its maximum of intensity; but that, viewed on its negative side, it must be everywhere stifled, even to the last vestige.Are the economists in a position to effect this elimination?
Have they foreseen the consequences, calculated the difficulties? If the answer should be affirmative, I should have the boldness to propose the following case to them for solution.
A treaty of coalition, or rather of association, -- for the courts would be greatly embarrassed to define either term, -- has just united in one company all the coal mines in the basin of the Loire.On complaint of the municipalities of Lyons and Saint Etienne, the ministry has appointed a commission charged with examining the character and tendencies of this frightful society.Well, I ask, what can the intervention of power, with the assistance of civil law and political economy, accomplish here?
They cry out against coalition.But can the proprietors of mines be prevented from associating, from reducing their general expenses and costs of exploitation, and from working their mines to better advantage by a more perfect understanding with each other? Shall they be ordered to begin their old war over again, and ruin themselves by increased expenses, waste, over-production, disorder, and decreased prices? All that is absurd.
Shall they be prevented from increasing their prices so as to recover the interest on their capital? Then let them be protected themselves against any demands for increased wages on the part of the workmen; let the law concerning joint-stock companies be reenacted; let the sale of shares be prohibited; and when all these measures shall have been taken, as the capitalist-proprietors of the basin cannot justly be forced to lose capital invested under a different condition of things, let them be indemnified.
Shall a tariff be imposed upon them? That would be a law of maximum.
The State would then have to put itself in the place of the exploiters;
keep the accounts of their capital, interest, and office expenses; regulate the wages of the miners, the salaries of the engineers and directors, the price of the wood employed in the extraction of the coal, the expenditure for material; and, finally, determine the normal and legitimate rate of profit.All this cannot be done by ministerial decree: a law is necessary.
Will the legislator dare, for the sake of a special industry, to change the public law of the French, and put power in the place of property? Then of two things one: either commerce in coals will fall into the hands of the State, or else the State must find some means of reconciling liberty and order in carrying on the mining industry, in which case the socialists will ask that what has been executed at one point be imitated at all points.
The coalition of the Loire mines has posited the social question in terms which permit no more evasion.Either competition, -- that is, monopoly and what follows; or exploitation by the State, -- that is, dearness of labor and continuous impoverishment; or else, in short, a solution based upon equality, -- in other words, the organization of labor, which involves the negation of political economy and the end of property.
But the economists do not proceed with this abrupt logic: they love to bargain with necessity.M.Dupin (session of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, June 10, 1843) expresses the opinion that, "though competition may be useful within the nation, it must be prevented between nations."
